The Cultural Gutter

taking the dumb out of fandom

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." -- Oscar Wilde

Twilight’s Anti-Fandom

Emma Vossen examines Twilight hate and anti-fans, writing: “People have become eager anti-fans of the series, creating an active subculture that manifests in hateful dialogue and value judgements on a seemingly arbitrary slice of a very large pop culture pie.”

High Fantasy for Young Adults

At The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik writes about The Lord of the Rings and its influence on young adult fantasy, how Tolkien’s fusing of the epic and the familiarly domestic brought us Eragon and Twilight. “Kids go to fantasy not for escape but for organization, and a little elevation; since life is like this already, [...]

We Need To Talk (Again)

Due to a personal emergency, Romance Editor Chris Szego won’t be able to post a new article this week. She will be back next month. Enjoy this timely piece, originally published in 2009. I’ve put it off long enough. Thought, ‘We can get into that later’, and ‘I should wait till the fuss dies down [...]

“Hi, I’m Twilight. And I’m True Blood.”

Twilight and True Blood have an animated Barbie off. (via Cinema Junkie)

By Any Other Name

heart of gold 80.jpeg

Despite being the largest piece of the trade publishing pie, there’s a lot of good stuff to read out there that isn’t Romance.  And I try to get through as much of it as possible*.  Funnily enough, though, much of the other fiction I read tends to have some sort of romance in it somewhere.  [...]

“Tresspassing on Sacred Ground”

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

As part of TCM‘s Race & Hollyood: Native American Images on Film” festival, Movie Morlocks has posted part 1 of an essay on Native Americans in horror movies from The Werewolf a 1913 Canadian silent to J.T. Petty’s The Burrowers and Twilight: New Moon: “The inclusion of Native Americans into actual horror movies boils down [...]

Talking More Twilight

Gabe Lezra hits a nerve when he writes about the white man’s burden in Twilight and New Moon and wonders why there’s no Team Bella and the comments at The Wesleyan Argus are all kerfuffled.

We Need to Talk

teenyapple.JPG

I’ve put it off long enough. Thought, ‘We can get into that later’, and ‘I should wait till the fuss dies down a little’. But truth is, we’re overdue. It’s time we talked. About Twilight

  • Support The Gutter

  • Of Note Elsewhere

    “It’s easier to tell the same stories everyone else does. There’s no particular shame in it.

    It’s just that it’s lazy, which is just about the worst possible thing a spec fic writer can be.

    Oh, and it’s not true.”

    Kameron Hurley writes about lazy writing, cannibal llamas, female soldiers, and women here. (Thanks, James!)

    ~

    Patton Oswalt’s multi-franchise super-movie described in his Star Wars filibuster from Parks and Recreation, animated.

    ~

    Corrigan Vaughan writes an open letter to “Fans of Geek Things“: “I appreciate that you think I have a nice rack and that some of you even find my friends and I to be pretty. That’s very kind. I’m not, however, super in love with the fact that having a rack at all seems to preclude me from being considered a ‘real’ fan.”

    ~

    The Black Girl Nerds Podcast discusses Black girls and women in the Heavy Metal industry with author and journalist Laina Dawes and Ursula “She-Wolf” Parson from Hear Evil News.

    ~

    The Hollywood Reporter interviews director Takashi Miike about his new film, Shield of Straw: ” In Japan now, films are very safe. When I was young and went to old cinemas, they had a distinctive feel, an adult smell about them. As you got in your seat and the lights went down, there was a feeling of excitement: What if the film is scarier than I thought it’s going to be? You’re taken into that world. Nowadays, you can sit in the theater and know it’s going to be safe. That’s good for business, but not for filmmaking.”

    ~

    The Atlantic profiles Spectral Motion, creators of monsters, “effects, and other mechanical grotesqueries that have since become household nightmares, if not names.”

    ~

  • The Book!

    From ETC Press

  • Spilling into Twitter

  • Obsessive?

    Then you might be interested in knowing you can subscribe to our RSS feed, find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter or Tumblr.

    -------

  • Weekly Notifications


     

  • What We’re Talking About

    1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s action adaptation animation art Canada capitalism China comedy comics fandom fantasy feminism film history games geekery gender history horror interviews Japan martial arts monsters movies music RIP romance science fiction space superheroes the ladies trailers tv UK USA video writing

  • Thanks To

    No Media Kings hosts this site, and Wordpress autoconstructs it.